Daily Archives: May 11, 2012

Jenson Button put his McLaren on top of the timesheets in second practice for the Spanish Grand Prix.

When on the harder tyre, he complained of “unbelievable understeer”, but was much faster on the softer compound. Sebastian Vettel was again 2nd, leading Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes.

Fernando Alonso abandoned his run on the softer tyre, leaving him 14th by the end of the day.

Running race-fuel simulations, Lotus had an impressive day, finishing 5th and 6th. Romain Grosjean was set to go faster, but was caught up by slower traffic, Felipe Massa and Charles Pic being the culprits.

Mark Webber and Kamui Kobayashi both speared into the gravel trap at turn 4 during the session. Lewis Hamilton and Bruno Senna also slipped off the track near the end.

Narain Karthikeyan did no running in second practice, as the HRT team fixed an electrical fault from FP1. He emerged from the pits with half an hour to go, but quickly coasted to a halt.

Fernando Alonso gave Ferrari their first top spot in an official F1 session this year.

The Spaniard pleased the home crowd with a 1:24.430. Sebastian Vettel briefly went fastest after the first half hour, but settled for 2nd, ahead of Kamui Kobayashi.

McLaren ran a new higher nose on their MP4-27, with Jenson Button 4th and Lewis Hamilton 8th, the latter complaining of understeer on his car. Button lamented that it was difficult to turn the tyres up to temperature.

Valtteri Bottas was 5th, over a second ahead of Pastor Maldonado back in 17th. Force India ran a batch of new updates, with Nico Hulkenberg entering the top 10. Jules Bianchi took over the second car, ending the session in 18th place.

Alexander Rossi tested for Caterham, his first F1 practice session, and ended up 21st, a second behind Vitaly Petrov. Dani Clos drove for HRT, and was 2.5 seconds off Pedro de la Rosa.